252 BIRDS IN LEGEND 



Now, as the raven or woodpecker, in the various myths of 

 schamir, is the dark storm-cloud, so the rock-splitting worm, 

 or plant or pebble is nothing more or less than the flash of 

 lightning carried and dropped by the cloud . . . 



The persons who told these stories were not weaving in- 

 genious allegories about thunder-storms, or giving utterance 

 to superstitions of which the original meaning was forgotten. 

 The old grannies who, along with a stoical indifference to the 

 fate of quails and partridges, used to impress upon me the 

 wickedness of killing robins, did not add that I should be 

 struck by lightning if I failed to heed their admonitions. 

 They had never heard that the robin was the bird of Thor: 

 they merely rehearsed the remnant of the superstition which 

 had survived to their own times, while the essential part of 

 it had long since faded from recollection. The reason for 

 regarding a robin's life as more sacred than a partridge's had 

 been forgotten; but it left behind, as was natural, a vague 

 recognition of that mythical sanctity. The primitive meaning 

 of a myth fades away as inevitably as the primitive meaning 

 of a word or phrase; and the rabbins which told of a worm 

 which shattered rocks no more thought of the writhing thun- 

 derbolts than the modern reader thinks of oyster-shells when 

 he sees the word ostracism, or consciously breathes a prayer 

 when he writes the phrase Good-bye. 



